" The father was very glad, because he thought that it would do the
boy good; so the sexton took him home to ring the bells. About two days
afterward he called him up at midnight to go into the church-tower to
toll the bell. "You shall soon learn what shivering means," thought the
sexton, and getting up he went out too. As soon as the boy reached the
belfry, and turned himself round to seize the rope, he saw upon the
stairs, near the sounding-hole, a white figure. "Who's there?" he called
out; but the figure gave no answer, and neither stirred nor spoke.
"Answer," said the boy, "or make haste off; you have no business here
to-night." But the sexton did not stir, so that the boy might think it
was a ghost.
The boy called out a second time, "What are you doing here? Speak, if
you are an honest fellow, or else I will throw you downstairs."
The sexton said to himself, "That is not a bad thought"; but he remained
quiet as if he were a stone. Then the boy called out for the third time,
but it produced no effect; so, making a spring, he threw the ghost down
the stairs, so that it rolled ten steps, and then lay motionless in a
corner. Thereupon he rang the bell, and then going home, he went to bed
without saying a word, and fell fast asleep. The sexton's wife waited
some time for her husband, but he did not come; so at last she became
anxious, woke the boy, and asked him if he knew where her husband was,
who had gone before him to the belfry.
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